Toil and Trouble
by GleefulMusing
Summary: Quinn is angry and she wants Beth back. Everyone will think she's the villain, but is she really?  What IS going on with her? A lot more than people think...


**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters portrayed in this story. They belong to Ryan Murphy and his crew. I'm just playing around with them for a while. There will be swearing in this story, if that makes you uncomfortable, better to leave now. It may have adult situations in future chapters, not sure yet, so again, if that's not your cup of tea, then you probably shouldn't read.**

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><p>AN: Hello again. I was just thinking about the episode last night and thinking about why Quinn would want Beth back so badly (beyond the fact that Beth is her biological child of course) and this kind of poured out. I was a little nervous to post it, but a friend convinced me to, so here it is. I'm not totally sure where I'm going with it, but I hope that you will enjoy it and leave a review if you really want to. If you want to be brutal, go right ahead, I can take it. :)

Also, if you read my other story, Playing the Game, an update will be forthcoming very soon.

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><p><em>"I'm sorry, Miss Fabray."<em>

_Quinn sat there, staring at the doctor in front of her like he had grown another head. She didn't want to look at the x-ray he was pointing at, but as she heard her mother give a strangled sob beside her, her head turned in slow motion, as if it were being pulled by an invisible rope. For a moment, she didn't know what she was looking at, the image so strange to her, backlit by the eerie, ethereal light. No, it had to be someone else, they'd gotten it mixed up in the labratory and the doctor was telling the wrong person._

_"Are you sure?" her mother whimpered beside her._

_"I'm afraid so," the doctor told them somberly, Quinn still not saying a word. Talking was the furthest thing from her mind right now. It was as if the lump had migrated to her throat. "We're lucky that we caught the tumor early. There's little chance that it's spread because we still have your daughter's ultrasounds from her pregnancy and there was no tumor then."_

_"And you're sure it's...malignant?" her mother asked, finding questions that Quinn's brain couldn't even form. _

_"Yes, I'm afraid so, with the rapidity that it's grown in such a short time, with the pain, and then with the tests, we're fairly positive that it's malignant."_

_Malignant, malignant, malignant. Quinn stared down at her hands. How could her body have betrayed her like this. She'd done everything, everything she could do to change herself. She'd gone blonde, she'd lost the weight, she'd made herself, inside and out look different, better than it was, and her body had failed her. It was like a rejection from her own body after it felt like everyone had rejected her. Everything in her life had turned against her._

_"What are our options?"_

_"Well, because the tumor appears to be localized, the best option would be a hysterectomy followed by a couple rounds of chemo to best get rid of the cancer. It is definitely treatable and being so early, there's a good chance of remission."_

_"I think we need to talk about it," her mother said. "Right, Quinny?"_

_She didn't say anything and so the doctor intervened, "I'll give you time to talk about and we can schedule another appointment when you're ready. My one word of advice is to not take too long to decide. The sooner we can get this taken care of, the better."_

She'd always liked the color pink. She'd tried to find a wig that looked like her old haircut and with her mother willing to spend any amount of money to buy her the best wig out there, she almost looked normal with it. The pink had been her own idea. It looked a little washed out because it wasn't her real hair, but it had been someone's once upon a time. She'd needed a change and what better way to experiment than to use someone else's hair. She hated taking off her wig. It became like a security blanket to her, something she could slip on and then slip on a new persona, someone who wasn't just growing their hair back after the last round of chemo.

She'd disappeared this summer. She'd had to. She didn't want anyone's pity. She'd woken up after that surgery with nobody but her mother by her side and that's how she wanted it. Nobody had even inquired about her and that was just fine. Let them all live their lives. She was going to live hers the way she wanted it. What did she have to lose now anyways? She'd been through cancer, had her goddamn uterus taken out, what the fuck was there left that could be taken? Friends were always fleeting and she was a senior so it was only one more year before she could get the fuck out of Lima.

She'd even quit New Directions, but they probably wouldn't care anyways. She wasn't the lead soloist, she wasn't the diva, she was just background noise, a pretty face dancing around, singing backup to the real singers. She didn't need that kind of shit in her life. She was a fucking cancer survivor...or so she hoped. They needed to wait a while to see if she was in remission.

Going back to school, she'd fallen in with a group called the Skanks. They could care less about her and again, that was fine. New Quinn only looked out for number one. The Skanks understood that because that's what they were about. The cigarettes were the real irony, not the Seacrest tattoo. She'd lived on the verge of death all summer, who cared if she had a few cigarettes, maybe they'd take her lungs out too.

"Quinn?" Rachel said a week into the school year. She'd already talked to her under the bleachers once and now this bitch was trying to follow her or something.

"What?" Quinn asked with irritation.

"New Directions could really use you," Rachel said in a small voice. "Santana has been kicked out because of the purple piano incident, which I don't think you were complicit with by the way, but now we're down even more and we could really use you, if you could just...think about coming to rehearsal, we all want you there."

Want her there enough to check up on her during the summer and make sure she wasn't literally dying everyday, needing help to get out of bed the day after chemo treatment just to go to the bathroom, throwing up constantly because she couldn't keep anything down. Now they needed her to sing for them so it was find Quinn, see what she's up to.

"Fuck off, Rachel, I've got kids to get lunch money from," Quinn said, becoming a stereotype right before Rachel's eyes.

"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us," Rachel said, shrinking away, probably thinking Quinn would slap the shit out of her and it was tempting, but Quinn didn't nearly have the strength to really fight. She hid the exhaustion from everyone except her mother. At school, everyone thought her new low, slow whisper was just her acting evil, but it was really because she didn't have the strength to talk any louder sometimes, so tired was she of just doing everyday things.

Despite her better judgment, she went to those rehearsals, but stayed away from the club, watching from the wings. Part of her, the lost part of her, wanted to go out there, to dance and sing and get lost in the words and the music like she used to when life got difficult. The rational, hard part of her reminded that lost part that she didn't have enough energy to prance around anymore. She felt kind of sad for that, but she didn't want the pity, not even from herself. Singing was stupid, dancing was stupider. She was the new Quinn. She adjusted her wig a little, making sure it was completely in place. They looked kind of good out there. She shook her head at herself and then picked up her bag, intending to walk out.

"Quinn? You came," Rachel's exhausted voice rang out behind her.

"I just came in here because I was supposed to beat a kid up, she didn't show," Quinn lied coolly. "I was leaving."

"Did you watch us?" Rachel asked.

"Caught a little bit," Quinn shrugged.

"What did you think?"

"I don't know," Quinn told her.

"If anyone can judge us, it's you," Rachel told her. "You're one of us."

"I _was_ one of you," Quinn said, "I'm not anymore. I'm done with that life, this is who I am now, this is who I want to be."

"I'm not disputing who you should be," Rachel said, though she looked distastefully as Quinn's outfit, probably wondering how anyone could feel comfortable in something that wasn't ironed and starched. "But you can be your new self in New Directions. You know what Mr. Shue says, that diversity is welcomed...even though you would _not_ believe this girl who auditioned, luckily Mr. Shue realized that to win, we're going to need to weed out the undesirables."

"What part of 'I don't want to join' don't you understand?" Quinn asked. "I'm with the Skanks now, we're happy with who we are and they accept me for who I am. I somehow doubt anyone in New Directions will accept me."

They hadn't even bothered to make sure she was fucking alive this summer.

"Well, I don't think...Puck might like it," Rachel mused, "but it doesn't matter, Tina was um...are you goth? I'm a little unclear as to the whole scene."

"I am what I am, Rachel," Quinn said, "can I go now?"

"Yeah," Rachel nodded sadly, "but if you need to talk, I mean, this is really a radical change and if you need someone, I know we're not close and we never really have been, but I've always been told that I've got a good ear for listening."

"Yeah, okay," Quinn said.

"I'm just saying," Rachel said with a sigh. "Just so you know."

"I said okay," Quinn said, then turned away and left.

She didn't need anyone. Why didn't Rachel seem to understand this? Everyone kept asking her to be something she couldn't be anymore. She couldn't be part of the Unholy Trinity, God, she sometimes couldn't get out of bed, but they wanted her to be on top of a pyramid. They wanted her to sing, her voice was so shot sometimes she could barely speak. They wanted, wanted, wanted, but what about what she wanted? What about what she had always wanted? She'd wanted to be perfect and she had ended up pregnant as a teenager. She'd wanted prom queen, she'd lost to a guy. She'd wanted happiness and instead she got cancer. Everyone wanted a piece of her, pieces she couldn't give, but when she might have needed someone, anyone, nobody was there for her.

"How was school today, Quinn?" her mother asked. Her mother hadn't questioned her transformation probably because she was just happy Quinn was alive. So that left a lot of leeway.

"Fine," Quinn said, pushing the food around her plate. Her appetite was another thing that suffered, but far be it for her to complain now.

"Anything interesting happening?" Her mother had become super mom since her cancer. She'd been so attentive, so loving, so jarring from the woman she used to be. She seemed to accept Quinn for everything that she was now, even when sometimes she wanted her mom to yell at her and tell her to snap out of it.

"Nope," Quinn said.

"I had hoped you would reconsider quitting the glee club, I really think you enjoyed that."

"Mom, you never even saw me compete."

"But you seemed to enjoy it and I know I would love to see you sing."

"I didn't, I was usually in the background."

"Even so."

"Mom, please drop it," Quinn said, pushing her plate away. "I'm not hungry, I don't have an appetite. I'm going to lie down, I'm exhausted."

"Do you need anything?"

"No, I'll be fine," Quinn said, going up to her room. She took off her wig and threw it on her dresser, staring at herself in the mirror. She hated the way she looked. Her hair wasn't even long enough for a pixie cut. She looked like she had a buzz cut, like she'd caught lice and had to shave her entire head. She ran her hands over it for a moment before lifting her shirt and staring at the red scar that ran across her abdomen. The doctor said it would take at least six months for it to fully fade. She stared at it for the longest time, stared at herself. The pink hair, the punk clothes, the Skanks, none of that was really the new Quinn. This girl that was staring at her right now, the one with no hair and an angry scar that led to nothingness…_that_ was the new Quinn Fabray.

And she hated everything about it.


End file.
